Club captain Scott Blackmore has every confidence his team’s winless run will be ended sooner rather than later. The new season has so far been unkind to Inglewood United with the club taking a miserly three points from five National Premier Leagues outings and making an early exit from the FFA Cup.
Blackmore, who joined the club last year, says it is just a matter of time before Inglewood find their groove and start piling on the points. “We’re not far away from a few wins and a good run of form,” said the commanding centre-half. “Then we’ll start climbing up to a more respectable position on the table.”
“We are a quality side with bags of talent,” Blackmore added. “We just need to stick to our game plan and work harder on what we do off the ball. For the most part we’ve been pretty strong defensively, but with a little bit of luck at the other end we’ll start taking wins.”
Inglewood’s poor start to the league season has been impacted by a tough draw, with the game to date being against five of last year’s top six sides. “We’ve had a difficult and demanding opening,” Blackmore said. “All the teams we’ve played will be at the upper end of the table again this year.”
“We felt we could have taken all three points from the three games we’ve drawn (against Bayswater City, Perth SC and Balcatta). But we need to play like we did against those teams every week, rather than getting up for the big games and not turning up against some of the lower teams.”
Inglewood’s next opponent is Perth Glory, a team Blackmore knows cannot be underestimated. “Glory always produces a good team,” he said. “They like keeping the ball and are reasonably disciplined and that’s earned them some good results so far … we certainly won’t be taking them lightly.”
“I played with a number of their players when they were coming through at ECU Joondalup,” continued Blackmore, who played a dozen seasons with the northern suburbs club. “My little buddy Knowlesy (Joe Knowles) is on fire, so we need to keep him quiet.”
Spirits are high within the Inglewood camp heading into what is shaping up as a must-win game for the club. “We need points – plain and simple – otherwise we start losing touch and the season starts getting away from us, and it’s far too early for that,” Blackmore commented.
“None of us were happy with our performance last week (against Sorrento), we started very slow and played to their strengths,” he said. “We’ve had a good week on the training track, we’ve had a good chat about our direction as a team and we’re buzzing to get back out there to right the wrongs that we made last weekend.”
